Genesis P-Orridge
Birth : 1950-02-22, Victoria Park, Manchester, England, UK
Death : 2020-03-14
History
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (born Neil Andrew Megson, 22 February 1950 – 14 March 2020) was an English singer-songwriter, musician, writer, and artist. P-Orridge's early confrontational performance work in COUM Transmissions in the late 1960s and early 1970s along with the industrial band Throbbing Gristle, which dealt with subjects such as prostitution, pornography, serial killers, occultism, and P-Orridge's own exploration of gender issues, generated controversy. Later musical work with Psychic TV received wider exposure, including some chart-topping singles. P-Orridge is credited on over 200 releases.
P-Orridge has two daughters, Caresse and Genesse, with former wife Paula P-Orridge (born Alaura O'Dell). After marrying Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge in 1993, they began a project to become Breyer P-Orridge, a single pandrogynous entity. Genesis Breyer P-Orridge continued this project after the death of Lady Jaye in 2007.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Self
As Genesis and I were working on the documentary film "Change Itself” (released in 2016), we agreed that it would be great to also have Genesis reading poetry in the film. One clip was eventually used. "Write Your Own Code" contains all of the material we shot in Oslo, Norway, 2014. These sessions also became the creative ignition for the spoken word album we made together in 2017, and which was released in 2019 by Ideal Recordings: "Loyalty Does Not End With Death." I have left the casual tone of the sessions, including some mishaps, as untouched as possible. Write Your Own Code! – Carl Abrahamsson, 2021
Hull, England, 1970. In a run-down commune in a tough port city, a group of social misfits - mostly working class, mostly self-educated - adopted new identities and began making simple street theater under the name COUM Transmissions. Their playful performances gradually gave way to work that dealt openly with sex, pornography, and violence. COUM lived on the edges of society, surviving on meager resources, finding fellowship with others marginalized by the mainstream. At the core of the group were two artists, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti. As their work evolved, Cosey embarked on a career modeling for pornographic magazines, which she claimed for herself as a conceptual artwork, using it to forge a specific position in relationship to 1970s feminism. In performances, Genesis pushed himself to extremes, testing the limits of the human body.
Self
A film about the making of the album "Loyalty Does Not End With Death" by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and Carl Abrahamsson.
Themself
To sum up the life and work of British artist Genesis Breyer P-Orridge is close to impossible. Not only because of the wide range of artistic disciplines, but also because of the timespan, since the mid 1960s to the present day, that has been saturated by hundreds of records, thousands of concerts, exhibitions, interviews, videos, spoken word performances, collages, sculptures, philosophy, cultural engineering, occultism and radical transgender concepts. A couple of descriptions are still valid after these 50 years of active creativity and provocation. P-Orridge is a romantic existentialist and a cultural engineer. Everything is both work as such and seed for cultural and behavioural change.
Co-Writer
A documentary film that will take viewers to Ouidah, Benin, the geographic heart of the Vodoun religion, where friends and collaborators, director Hazel Hill McCarthy, III and cultural engineer Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, explore the relationship between Vodoun and Western secular art and performance by trying to answer the question of what embodiment is.
A documentary film that will take viewers to Ouidah, Benin, the geographic heart of the Vodoun religion, where friends and collaborators, director Hazel Hill McCarthy, III and cultural engineer Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, explore the relationship between Vodoun and Western secular art and performance by trying to answer the question of what embodiment is.
Self
Google 'The Process Church of the Final Judgement' and you'll discover a long list of conspiracy theories. Only now, former members reveal the truth about the misunderstood group once dubbed 'One of the most dangerous Satanic cults in America.'
Industrial Soundtrack For The Urban Decay traces the origins of Industrial music, taking you on a journey through the crumbling industrial cities of Europe to America's thriving avant-garde scene. Featuring Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, NON, SPK, Test Dept, Clock DVA, Re/Search - V Vale, Z'EV, Click Click, Sordide Sentimental, Hula, The Klinik, Ant Zen, Orphx, In The Nursery and Prima Linea.
Veteran
An alienated girl struggles to piece together the events of the previous night over 24 hours in NYC, only to be reminded that nothing is ever as it seems in a city where everyone is a self-made avatar, and violence looms like a halo.
Himself / Herself
An intimate, affecting portrait of the life and work of ground-breaking performance artist and music pioneer Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV) and his wife and collaborator, Lady Jaye, centered around the daring sexual transformations the pair underwent for their 'Pandrogyne' project.
Self
A riveting and emotional journey into the world of writer William S. Burroughs, a man considered as cold as an iceberg on a winter night.
Director
This is a video performance of their holiest ritual, the Sabbath Assembly, as recorded August 23, 2009 at The Silent Movie Theater in Los Angeles CA. About 50% of the video is the ritual itself, consisting of recitations from their unique liturgy interspersed with vintage hymns. The text is read by original Process minister Sammy M Nasr and the songs are performed here by the band Sabbath Assembly (Jex Thoth, Imaad Wasif, Kevin Rutmanis and Dave Nuss - obviously taking their name from the ceremony itself). Following the ritual is a slideshow presentation on the church narrated by original Process member/author Timothy Wyllie and finally a Q&A interview with Timothy conducted by Feral House publisher Adam Parfrey. So while it's not a documentary exactly, you certainly learn about the history of the church, its practices, and get a good feel of what it was like to be a member.
Himself
In 1960, Brion Gysin invented the Dream Machine, a hypnotic light device with the power to induce hallucinations, drugless highs, and revolutionize human consciousness. It looks simple enough; a 100-watt light bulb, a motor, and a rotating cylinder with cutouts. Just sit in front of it, close your eyes, and wait for the visions to come. The Dream Machine enthralled mystics and freethinkers everywhere; Kurt Cobain had a dream machine, and William S. Burroughs thought it could be used to “storm the citadels of enlightenment.” With a custom-made Dream Machine in tow, director Nik Sheehan takes us on a journey into the life of Brion Gysin; his art, his complex ideas, and his friendships with some of the most eccentric counter-cultural icons. Taking the Dream Machine as the basis of its explorations, FLicKeR asks crucial questions about the nature of art and consciousness, and imagines a humanity liberated to explore its creativity in complete freedom.
Himself
Documentary about the influence of Lou Reed's experimental fifth album 'Metal Machine Music', released in 1975 and widely considered to mark the beginning of industrial rock music, of which the band Nine Inch Nails have been leading proponents.
Himself
A chronological account of the influential late 1970s English rock band.
H/erself
Genesis P-Orridge and Lady Jaye Breyer P’Orridge talk about their pandrogeny manifesto, about gender, and about how they seek to become identical to one another via medical experimention.
Psychedelic industrial rocker Genesis P-Orridge brings the visual and musical wonders of his longtime outfit Psychic TV to DVD with this release from Music Video Distributors. Presented in 1.33:1 full-frame, the image quality on both Black and Joy is as good as can be expected, with slight, occasional pixilation more likely due to the source materials that the actual video transfer. Dolby Digital Stereo audio is strong throughout. In addition to Black and Joy, fans of Joy Division will be happy to note the inclusion of the IC Water promo featuring footage of the late Ian Curtis inter-cut with Orridge walking the beach as flowers bloom in time-lapse and dolphins leap from the ocean.
Commentator
A documentary on the once promising American rock bands The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols. The friendship between respective founders, Anton Newcombe and Courtney Taylor, escalated into bitter rivalry as the Dandy Warhols garnered major international success while the Brian Jonestown Massacre imploded in a haze of drugs.
Self
Less a documentary than a primer on all electronic music. Featuring interviews with nearly every major player past and present, as well as a few energetic live clips, Modulations delves into one of electronica's forgotten facets: the human element. Lee travels the globe from the American Midwest to Europe to Japan to try to express the appeal of music often dismissed as soulless. Modulations shows that behind even the most foreign or alien electronic composition lies a real human being, and Lee lets many of these Frankenstein-like creators express and expound upon their personal philosophies and tech-heavy theories. Lee understands that a cultural movement as massive and diverse as dance music can't be contained.
Joe Christ's video freakshow of professional scarification, genital mutilation, and all-around physical debasement.
Himself
A collage of Derek Jarman's super 8 footage spanning over 20 years.
Tramp
Independent film with music by Psychic tv. Features a cameo by Derek Jarman
Music
Imagining October explores art and politics in the final years of the Cold War, drawing connections between pre-Perestroika Russia and Thatcherite Britain. The title refers to the 1917 Bolshevik revolution and Sergei Eisenstein’s propaganda film October: Ten Days That Shook the World 1928. The project began during a trip to the Soviet Union sponsored by the British Film Institute in October 1984. Jarman was invited to present The Tempest in Moscow and Baku with fellow filmmaker Sally Potter and film theorist Peter Wollen and asked in return to make a short film for the London Film Festival in November.
Director
Moonchild is a long lost gem in the canon of esoteric cinema. The title references a 1923 novel by Aleister Crowley, and Genesis originally stated of the film, 'Moonchild is a spell, to create a new person or a new stage in people, through compassion and through thought, and it's a construct, just like a spell is.'" “Moonchild is a spell, to create a new person or a new stage in people, through compassion and through thought” The film stars Genesis’s wife at the time, Paula P-Orridge, and is dedicated to their first-born child, Caresse. It also features John Gosling of Zos Kia and Psychic TV. "Moonchild was originally broadcast in 1984 on Spanish television show La Edad De Oro, alongside interviews with Genesis P-Orridge, filmmaker Derek Jarman, and musician and conceptual artist Jordi Valls, and performances by Psychic TV and Vagina Dentata Organ, which caused a forced shutdown of the network by the government at gunpoint.
Music
F.M. discovers that different sonic frequencies induce different patterns of behaviour in listeners, first in his own studio but later in the local "H-Burger" restaurant where the passive muzak appears to be wiping people's emotions.
High Priest
F.M. discovers that different sonic frequencies induce different patterns of behaviour in listeners, first in his own studio but later in the local "H-Burger" restaurant where the passive muzak appears to be wiping people's emotions.
A short film created for Spanish TV touching on the subject of Catalonia's struggle for independence, interspersed with symbolic images.
Himself
Psychic TV performs live at the Berlin Atonal Festival, December 2nd, 1983.
Music
Derek Jarman's film portrait of American writer William S. Burroughs was shot in September 1982 during his first visit to England to attend the legendary Final Academy events at the South London Ritzy Cinema. These were Burroughs-themed art and performance nights curated by Psychic TV. Jarman’s film shows Burroughs on Tottenham Court Road signing autographs with fans and inside a shop buying alcohol. The industrial soundtrack by Psychic TV features a sample of Burroughs repeating "boys, school showers and swimming pools full of 'em'". Additional footage shot by Jarman during Burroughs' visit is reported to have been confiscated by Scotland Yard in 1991 and remains lost. Jarman and Psychic TV would continue to collaborate (“magic bound us together” Jarman wrote), with Jarman directing the music video for Catalan and staring as the spokesperson in the Psychic TV video A Spokesman for the Temple of Psychick Youth.
Throbbing Gristle performing live at the Kezar Pavillion in San Francisco, California on the evening of May 29th, 1981. This would be TG's last show until reforming in 2002.
Editor
Experimental artistic film which uses the milieu of experimental art with a background of various kinds of sounds and music. (worldcat.org) Posthumously released short film compiled from reels of film found at Balch’s office after his death.
Producer
Experimental artistic film which uses the milieu of experimental art with a background of various kinds of sounds and music. (worldcat.org) Posthumously released short film compiled from reels of film found at Balch’s office after his death.
Director
Experimental artistic film which uses the milieu of experimental art with a background of various kinds of sounds and music. (worldcat.org) Posthumously released short film compiled from reels of film found at Balch’s office after his death.
Producer
A shadowy, sharply-dressed spokesman for the occult, chaos-magic fellowship and network The Temple of Psychic Youth reads a brief message.
For over 30 years, the so-called First Transmission video from Psychic TV, has been the stuff of, well, “snuff film” legend. First advertised in the back pages of Thee Grey Book , The First Transmission was an ultra weird touchstone of the underground VHS tape trading scene of the 1980s.
An experimental film of the group Throbbing Gristle in concert.
The live in-studio recording of Throbbing Gristle's Heathen Earth, in February of 1980, in front of an invited audience at the studios of Industrial Records Ltd.
Himself
"This video cassette contains a recording of a live performance by TG at Oundle School. The audience, apart one or two members of the staff, was composed completely of school boys between about 8 and 18. In addition to the single camera recording of the gig, certain visual information from the files of Industrial Records Ltd. has been included. Like the TG sound itself, the content and quality of this recording cannot and should not be compared with conventional commercial recordings."
Woman
Genesis P-Orridge: We used to just improvise at night, making up stories to each other. And so at some point we began making videos but when that one was done we don’t remember. It was completely made up on the spot. We were doing something else and then Jay just said, ‘Why don’t you do one of those weird women?’ ‘Okay.’ And made the story up out of nowhere.
Director
Genesis P-Orridge: We used to just improvise at night, making up stories to each other. And so at some point we began making videos but when that one was done we don’t remember. It was completely made up on the spot. We were doing something else and then Jay just said, ‘Why don’t you do one of those weird women?’ ‘Okay.’ And made the story up out of nowhere.
